Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth (De Veritate)

1. As Augustine says, free choice is a capability of will and reason. But reason and will are distinct powers. Free will then pertains to distinct powers.

2. Powers are known by their acts. But acts of several different powers are ascribed to free choice; for, as Damascene says, "these things occur in us: to be moved or not, to attack or not, to desire or not," and the like, which unquestionably belong to several different powers. Free choice is therefore several powers.

3. Boethius says that free choice is in "divine substances" (that is, angels) inasmuch as there is in them "a penetrating judgment and an uncorrupted will." But penetration of judgment belongs to reason. Free choice therefore includes will and reason, and thus it is several powers.

4. The answer was given that it is one power having the virtuality of two.--On the contrary, in the lower part of the soul are found an affective and a cognitive power just as they are in the higher. But in the lower part there is no power which has in itself the virtuality of the cognitive and the affective powers. Then neither is there any in the higher part.

5. Boethius says that "the extreme form of slavery is had when human minds, given over to vices . . ., grow dark with the cloud of ignorance and are put in a turmoil with pernicious affections." But the slavery of which there is question is opposed to free choice. Hence free choice includes reason and the affections, and so the conclusion is the same as before.

To the Contrary:

Man is called a microcosm inasmuch as there is found in him a resemblance to the macrocosm. But in the macrocosm two extreme natures are not found without an intermediate one. Then neither in man are two extreme powers found without one that is intermediate. We find in men, however, one power which always tends to good, synderesis, and another practically the opposite of this, which always inclines to evil, sensuality. Hence there is also found a power which is open to good and evil, and this is free choice. Thus it seems that free choice is one power.

REPLY:

Two considerations have led some to hold that free choice is several powers:

(1) They saw that by free choice we have control over the acts of all the powers. They accordingly affirmed that free choice is a sort of universal whole with respect to all the powers. But this cannot be, because, were it so, there would be required in us many powers of free choice on account of the multiplicity of powers; for many men are many animals. Nor are we forced to hold this by the reason mentioned, for all the acts of the different powers are referred to free choice only through the intermediary of one act, to choose. We are moved by free choice inasmuch as by our free choice we choose to be moved; and the same is true of other acts. It is therefore not shown by this that free choice is several powers, but rather that it is one power which moves different powers by its own efficacy.

(2) Some were moved to affirm a plurality of powers in free choice by the fact that they saw concur in the act of free choice the functions of different powers: judgment, which belongs to reason, and appetite, which belongs to will. They accordingly said that free choice includes several powers as an integral whole contains its parts. Now this cannot be true. Since the act which is attributed to free choice is a single specific act, to choose, it cannot proceed immediately from two distinct powers; but it proceeds from one immediately and from the other mediately, inasmuch as the characteristic of the prior power is communicated to the posterior. It remains, then, that free choice is a single power.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. Augustine says that free choice is a capability of will and reason because man is ordained to the act of free choice through both powers, though not immediately.

2. Free choice is not referred to the acts of different powers except through the intermediary of its own single act, as has been said.*

3. Boethius attributes to free choice the characteristics of different powers inasmuch as through different powers man is ordained to the act of free choice, as has been said.*

4. In the irrational part of the soul there is found on the part of the cognitive power only simple apprehension and not any comparing or ordering, as is found in the rational apprehensive power. Consequently, in the sensitive part appetite is brought to bear upon its object absolutely, without having in the appetitive power any order derived from the apprehensive. In the sensitive part, therefore, there is no power which embraces in some sort both the apprehensive and the appetitive, as there is in the rational part.

5. This is to be answered in the same way as the fourth difficulty.